


The Issues of Dating a Holmes

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Category: James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: (which was fun), 00Q - Freeform, Bondlock, Double Date, Established Relationship, Humour, John's POV, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mycroft is invoked as the Worst Threat Ever, and bdsm is implied, date, rather heavily, relationship, slight crack, some sexual content, which everyone agrees with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock go on a double date with Q and Bond. Which really, was one of the worst ideas anybody had ever come up with in recorded history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Issues of Dating a Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> A tumblr prompt got very out of hand - thank you, random anon!
> 
> Hope you all enjoy :) Jen.

“Remind me why we’re doing this?” Sherlock asked, voice a loaded machine gun. His purple shirt clung around his contours, his suit black and imposing, coat swirling in clouds about his feet, looking both utterly gorgeous and entirely unapproachable. 

“He’s your brother,” John said simply, and wondered why that was an excuse for anything at all.

John felt rather plain, compared to Sherlock. He was wearing his favourite jumper, the jacket Sherlock claimed to like, and some passable trousers that were just slightly too tight around the arse. Sherlock had looked appreciative though, so he’d thought maybe it was worth trying. 

When they got the restaurant, Q and Bond were already waiting. John looked at Q, and felt marginally better; he looked like a teenage boy being taken out to dinner by his parents. His shirt was slightly rumpled, hair was irredeemable, and he pushed up his glasses with one finger as John smiled, and greeted the pair.

Bond was giving Sherlock a run for his money, in a tuxedo that would usually have looked grossly out of place in a normal restaurant; Bond, however, looked like he may have sprung from the womb dressed in top to toe Armani. The shirt gave away enough suggestion of muscle to be impressive, the jacket clung around muscular arms, the trousers around shapely legs, and John nearly slapped himself. He was not staring at his boyfriend’s younger brother’s boyfriend. No.

Sherlock’s hand snaked possessively. Damn. He’d been caught out on that one.

“Evening John, Sherlock,” Q said lightly, smiling. John nodded back, settling himself opposite Q. He realised what a bad idea this was when he left Sherlock opposite Bond; Sherlock was glaring daggers at Bond, who was antagonising him unapologetically by continuing to smile unashamedly.

Q caught John’s eye, and gave a meaningful eye roll. John smirked slightly.

“Sherlock, stop glaring at James,” Q asked, kicking his elder brother under the table. Sherlock’s poisonous glare turned on Q, who just sighed. “Really? Don’t be an infant, Sherlock.”

“Or what?” Sherlock retorted petulantly.

“I’ll call Myc,” Q returned, with a triumphant grin. Ha. Sherlock was caught, and knew it. Invoking Mycroft was always a trump card in sibling arguments; he was the master at reading situations, meaning he always knew who was in the wrong. Mycroft was impossible to lie to. Sherlock was being petulant, and Mycroft was enough to reduce hostility, at least.

He glared at John instead, who knew him well enough to put up with it until Sherlock had decided to act his age, not his shoe size.

“So, James,” John managed, as somebody poured him wine. He had never been grateful to see alcohol in his life. “How’s work?”

“I’m hoping to be assigned a new brief imminently,” he said expressionlessly. He didn’t expand on the statement. John drank his wine.

Sherlock drummed fingers on the table, while John started to distantly wonder whose _bloody stupid_ idea this had been in the first place.

“Q, how’s…”

“The phrase ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’ has never been applied more literally,” Q interjected, before John could finish the sentence. John drank his wine. “Thank you for asking,” he supplemented. John suspected a kick under the table had been administered from Bond, given the smug expression.

“Mycroft…”

Q and Sherlock groaned in unison. “We do not bring up Mycroft again, I resented him doing it the first time,” Sherlock whined, before fixing azure eyes on Q. “Incidentally, if you’re rude to John again, I’ll tell everybody your real name.”

“You have to stop using that as a threat,” Q retorted. “Bond knows, anyway.”

Bond couldn’t suppress a snort; it was a bloody ridiculous name. It put ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Mycroft’ to shame, as far as names went. John looked between Q and Sherlock, pleading for one of them to let him in on the secret that _everyone else knew_.

Nobody did. John drank his wine.

“How’s the shoulder?” Bond asked John, who looked mildly alarmed; he’d assumed most avenues of conversation had been well and truly massacred.

“…Fine,” he said eventually. “Still twinges, but that’s not surprising.”

“I have one, I know the feeling,” Bond nodded; John raised an eyebrow, surprised, and the pair quickly descended into a cross-table conversation while Sherlock glared at Q, and Q stared into space, looking mostly bored.

Bond drew the conversation onto John’s experiences at the GP’s surgery; Q briefly wandered out of his reverie. “Ah yes, you’re a doctor,” he noted, and meandered back into daydreams of computer codes.

John had the odd impression he had told Bond about every facet of his life so far. This was actually almost true; Bond was an absolute master at managing to extort information, perhaps more so than even Sherlock. He did make a living out of it, after all. Bond had essentially acquired every single relevant piece of information about John in a single conversation.

Sherlock glared at his brother, observing everything, muttering under his breath; John took a glance at him, and conceded that Sherlock looked completely insane. John drank his wine.

Bond continued to ask questions; he was the only person engaging in any conversation at all, so John decided to throw caution to the wind, and just go along with it. Hopefully Sherlock would intervene if he went too far.

He snorted aloud at that thought. Of course Sherlock wouldn’t intervene. He wouldn’t understand the basic concept of ‘too far’ in the first place.

John was dimly aware that he was getting quite drunk.

“Q, when are you planning to tell Mycroft that you and Bond are engaged?” Sherlock asked, almost casually, barring the smirk of unbelievable satisfaction.

Bond’s expression hardened, hand twitching towards his jacket in a too-recognisable gesture, that the soldier in John recognised, and mimicked, and had to remind himself he didn't need to do.

Q closed his eyes, took a breath, sighed. “You bastard, Sherlock,” he muttered, reaching up a hand to lift his glasses, and pinch the bridge of his nose. John drank his wine. Sherlock gloated transparently.

John decided to stay as quiet as was safe and sensible. Q eventually calmed himself down, and looked at Sherlock, his expression murderous. “Yes. Bond and I have decided that we wish to formalise our relationship.”

Sherlock snorted. “Romantic.”

“Said the asexual,” Q completed without a heartbeat of hesitation; John saw a nightmare of childhood in a single exchange, and drank his wine. He wondered briefly who was seeing fit to keep on refilling it, but he really didn’t want to question it too closely.

“How did you know?” Bond asked; his voice was calm, but even John could see the slight edge of tension in his body.

Sherlock opened his mouth, and John whacked him on the arm to stop him explaining in nauseating detail what quirk of something had betrayed their secret. It was unfortunate enough that Sherlock had decided to announce it so brazenly. “He does that,” John told Bond, and hoped that was enough.

The brothers looked about ready to kill one another. Bond laid a hand on Q’s; Q gave a sudden jump, shocked. John could see the familial traits; Sherlock did that, to a lesser degree, could tune out of everything around him and focus in on one specific event. Q took that to a completely new spectrum, completely phasing out the world.

“Am I invited?” Sherlock growled, twiddling his own wine glass between his fingers.

John groaned. “Sherlock, try and be an adult,” he snapped. Sherlock kicked him under the table, but not before shooting him an absolutely lethal look that promised no sex for a week. John drank his wine.

Q blinked at him. “I’m debating it,” he returned to his brother. “Thank you for the congratulations, by the way.”

“You should have told me,” Sherlock snarled.

“Congratulations,” John managed; Q shrugged, smiled happily, and looked like an infatuated teenager. Bond nodded his gratitude, and almost managed a full smile himself.

Somebody placed a lasagne in front of John. He actually found this mildly surprising; he didn’t remember having ordered anything. He had a background recollection of seeing a menu, and discussing some aspects with Bond.

“I dealt with the ordering,” Bond told John in a quiet aside; John shrugged. He’d ended up with exactly what he wanted. It took him a moment to realise just how alarming that actually was, given that this was the first prolonged stretch of time he had ever spent with Bond. It had taken Sherlock three months to work out he preferred tea to coffee.

Bond raised an eyebrow at John, who was inches away from voicing something. A complaint, possibly, or at the very least some exclamation. He met Bond’s eye, and shrugged helplessly to himself. There was no goddamn point, anyway.

The brother griped at each other over the table, and Sherlock suddenly rounded on Bond lethally. Bond had ordered him a rocket and goat’s cheese pizza. Yep. John would have ordered him the precise same thing. Sherlock was, of course, going to take exception to that.

“It’s Bond’s job,” Q groaned at Sherlock, as a meat calzone arrived. John noted how unlikely that seemed, from Q; he had expected Q to be some faddy vegetarian, or something similar. Or perhaps something similar to Sherlock’s occupational habit of ignoring meals altogether, out of boredom, or out of some bizarre need to test whether he could actually _survive_ that long without food.

John gave Sherlock another whack. Both of them would end up with horrendously bruised shins, at this rate. John just hoped that Q and Bond were undergoing the same experience opposite. John drank his wine.

Apparently not, John mused, as Q smiled shyly at Bond in a way that made John feel vaguely nauseated, thank him for the meal. Sherlock only looked at John like that when very ill, or when a chemical experiment of his had gone wrong. If Sherlock looked at him like that, it was usually about time for John to call an ambulance.

Sherlock clearly saw Bond and Q’s exchange too; John gave a mild yelp of surprise as Sherlock’s overly possessive hand once _again_ attacked him. His hand attached to John’s lower back, and stayed there.

Alright then. 

John ate some lasagne, and drank his wine. It was very good lasagne, as it happened. Sherlock started picking at his pizza with obvious contempt, and Q started to devour the calzone – which was incidentally about the size of the boy’s torso – with worrying speed and zero elegance. Bond had a piece of lamb. It looked quite nice, actually. A little bloody for John’s tastes, but then, he wasn’t eating it.

“So, _James_ ,” Sherlock started; John gave a relatively obvious groan. Sherlock’s tone of voice boded badly. Q agreed, by the look of it; he shot a look at John that pleaded for him to intervene, eyes huge, guileless and innocent.

John knew full damn well that Q was neither of the above, but somehow, he managed to somehow come across as both. Manipulative, then. Sherlock was the same, but in a different way; he could tie John’s minds in knots, catch him out too easily. Q just stared at him, and John felt a surge of protectiveness for the very young-looking man being bullied by his elder brother.

John kicked Sherlock again, under the table, as Sherlock began asking a very unnecessary question concerning Bond’s romantic history. He stopped quite abruptly, looking at John with shock, almost emoting. John felt rather helpless; he couldn’t win either way.

Q shot John the same shy smile he had shot at Bond earlier; John got a sudden sense of just how endearing Q was able to be. That kind of power was actively unfair for just one person to possess. Q could probably destroy civilisations through well-placed glances if he tried hard enough.

According to Sherlock, he could also reroute a computer to explode in less than twenty-one seconds, and could shoot a moving target from several hundred yards. The cute glances were probably superfluous when you could shoot that well.

Everybody was staring at him. John wondered, for an odd moment, just how much of that he’d said aloud; Q looked vaguely amused, Sherlock looked scandalised, and Bond was expressionless. Bond had been expressionless a _lot_. Apparently he was good at it. ‘Poker faced’ took on a new meaning.

John drank his wine. Really, there was little else he could do. This really couldn’t get substantially worse.

Sherlock’s phone rang. Superb. Of course it could get worse.

“You’re not allowed to answer it,” Q said quickly, mouth full of calzone. “I’ve turned off my work phone, and my job is actually _important_.”

Sherlock smirked, and held the phone up to his ear.

Bond moved with unbelievable speed; Sherlock’s eyes went scarily narrow, the phone went flying and landed in Bond’s outstretched other hand, and despite having leant right over the table, didn’t so much as brush the wine glasses.

John drank his wine, a little desperately. Sherlock’s hand was still on his back. It clenched in abrupt anger, and John gave a mild yelp of shock. “Sherlock is occupied, you will be able to reach him in the morning,” Bond said into the phone, not breaking eye contact with Sherlock, who was inches away from losing his mind at his bloody baby brother, and his boyfriend.

Bond hung up, passed the phone to Q. Q examined the phone briefly, and gave it a few deft flicks, doing something too fast for John to properly follow.

His smile turning unnervingly saccharine, Q handed the phone back to Sherlock. Completely dead. John would have given good money to know how he’d done that – Sherlock’s phone was constantly on, all day and night, _including_ when they were in bed.

Given Sherlock’s sexual proclivities, it was occasionally very Not Good to have Sherlock suddenly on his phone. On one occasion, John hadn’t gotten out for nearly twenty minutes, while Sherlock continued to talk happily on the phone.

They hadn’t done anything like that again for a while, until John had forgiven him, and Sherlock had bought cuffs that John could slip. They kept Lestrade’s police-issue ones for Sherlock; it was only fair to give the man a challenge, after all.

John made a mental note to talk to Q about dismembering Sherlock’s phone; when he glanced up from his empty plate of lasagne, Q caught his eye, and winked. Good. That talk would hopefully not be too arduous.

“Would you like to see a dessert menu?”

Fear struck John like lightning.

He actually really liked Q and Bond; Q was a little weird, but John was used to Sherlock – weird he could handle. Bond he respected, and could talk to easily. Add Sherlock to the mix, however, and both Holmes brothers regressed to half their age, John became an alcoholic, and Bond sat there inputting information like Mycroft on a bad day.

Dessert meant another half hour minimum, and really, he wasn’t sure his liver could survive that kind of onslaught.

“Why not?” Sherlock said, with one of the most transparently false smiles John had ever seen him issue. Q met it, nodded pleasantly, accepted the dessert menu. Bond kissed Q’s cheek gently, stroking his knuckles as they opened a soft dialogue on the merits of tiramisu.

John drank his wine, and excused himself to go to the bathroom.

“They’re outdoing us,” Sherlock growled. John jumped about the foot in the air, his body demonstrating how bloody difficult it is to urinate when somebody is distracting you.

“What in the hell does that mean?!”

“Q is determined to illustrate that he is in a more functional relationship than I, and that he has grown to be happier,” Sherlock snarled, pacing the small tiled bathroom, while John willed his body to just finish off, regardless of his partner’s behaviour.

“God forbid you’re _both happy_ ,” John sniped, sighing in relief; he shook himself off, zipped his flies, walked to the sinks. A little unsteady. Not that surprising. “Would that be so awful? I mean jesus, do you love him at all?”

“Of course I do, he’s my brother,” Sherlock snorted. “It’s the same with Mycroft. We’re siblings, doesn’t mean we can stand the sight of each other. We’re very different people.”

“Don’t be such a twat, and you may actually find something in common,” John groaned, running his hands under the dryer, shaking a few times, turning to Sherlock with a rather weary expression. Sherlock looked completely unfazed; John took a deep breath, and knew precisely what he needed to do.

He leapt on Sherlock, kissing him passionately, running hands through his hair, groping him unapologetically. Sherlock gave a groan, before reciprocating wildly, allowing John to push him against the wall, his head banging on the tiles.

John pulled away, straightened his hair, pressed a chaste kiss on Sherlock’s lips. “Now, that should be a conversation-starter,” John said smugly; Sherlock looked properly debauched, which would certainly put paid to any ‘asexual’ jokes.

John left first, settling himself opposite Q, who smiled benevolently – John asked about the phone, Q explained in simple terms, John thanked him.

Sherlock ambled over from the bathroom; Q looked at him, raising an eyebrow, and returned his attention to John. “Well played, John,” he said quietly, as Sherlock slid into his seat, with a vaguely dreamy smile, hand seeking John’s. Bond’s eyebrow was somewhere in his hairline, unlikely to descend any time soon.

An impasse.

John smiled, and drank his wine.

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments or kudos are gratefully received - I tend to bounce up and down maniacally, giggling.
> 
> Dedicated to my Lex, as always.


End file.
